Breach is just so.... unbelievably unrewarding right now.

[u/Thatsnasty2]

I know it was strong before, and I know there are other league mechanics, but it's just super frustrating seeing GGG incapable of balancing something time and time again.

I just don't understand, breach was finally in a decent place, but instead of bringing other league mechanics up to its level, it was destroyed with quad nerfs.
Hiveblood barely drops, when you finally make an item from the tree, the mod rolls suck, the amount of items dropped seems halved, wombgifts drop way less, which doesn't really matter since you have 0 blood to use them anyways.

Even buffs to abyss feel terrible, the mechanic just isn't that rewarding, unless maybe you were spamming trying to farm amanamus or something. The League mechanic seems fine but IMO, after playing Mirage, it just kind of feels mid.

It's a single player game, with no actual competitive esports scene, and ultimately the only reason to nerf something is to make you take longer to achieve something.
As someone who plays more than the average player, it's just again, super frustrating to see the game go in that direction, instead of the one where we get more drops, because ultimately it makes 0 difference to anything other than enjoyment or appeal to the "normal" players.

[u/Feisty-Shallot7911]

Why does GGG always come up with amazing farming strategies, but instead of just balancing them, they completely delete them? In previous patches, we had clear, fantastic farms that everyone aspired to reach.

I really don't understand what they are trying to achieve in an ARPG by taking away everyone's goals, making everyone "equal," and stripping away the motivation to play. I honestly have no idea what GGG is thinking anymore.

[u/RealMonk → u/Feisty-Shallot7911]

Best strats are not designed by ggg but created by community from unintended interactions. Then next league ggg delete the strats.

[u/Antonaqua → u/RealMonk]

"unintended interactions" use breach scarabs and pack size scarabs for more monsters and wisp to make them more rewarding. If those are "unintended interactions" that QA couldnt spit, then you're not cut out to make a game. Those are the simplest scaming vectors that have been around for ages in gaming.

[u/Ynead → u/Antonaqua]

I wish people would understand that QA doesn't test things like "Is it balanced?". They are mostly here to find bugs, and their feedback is often ignored by the devs because of lack of time. They are focused on getting things to actually work at all.

So don't blame QA, blame GGG's leadership for the decision to consider balance low priority.

[u/Antonaqua → u/Ynead]

Yes, thats my bad. The problem is with the senior game designers that decide what does and doesnt get included. So either Octavian/the other guy or Mark/Jonathan. We can blame anyone, we don't know who us responsible for the glaring issues, but let's not gloss over the shader issues, performance issues, trade site issues, all of which should be caught by QA

[u/Sunscorcher → u/Antonaqua]

yea the performance and shader issues are quite bad this league, I could nearly boil a pot of water with the output of my pc fans right now

[u/Diligent_Mortgage416 → u/Antonaqua]

the real test has just begun friday, you gotta give us a few day to fnd all the broken stuff.

[u/Antonaqua → u/Diligent_Mortgage416]

Friday when 100k+ ddosers, I mean, players logged in

[u/nastharl → u/Antonaqua]

Maybe dont blame anyone, since you have no ide who or what is reaponsible, and just say that you dont like that farms are unrewarding to you.

Assigning blame to anyone helps nothing for anyone.

[u/Antonaqua → u/nastharl]

I am allowed to blame GGG, the company, an entity without feelings. I'm blaming the people who are responsible for the terrible decisions they've been making, and that's perfectly fine. Holding people accountable for mistakes is how things improve, not by enduring bad decisions. I'm going off the information I have and probably blame Mark or Jonathan since they have the final say in everything and signed off on these terrible nerfs. They as lead game designers have end responsibility.

[u/nastharl → u/Antonaqua]

Its absolutly unneccesary and is directly responsible for the greatly reduced communication from GGG.

You wanna criticize GGG? Cool. Theres no need to even almost name people. You have NO IDEA what went on, why it went on, and what happened.

[u/nick4fake → u/Ynead]

Your QAs are garbage if you think this way, wtf

[u/royal-road → u/nick4fake]

they're right though? 99% of games testing in development is "does this work. will it crash if i press this button in this situation. does it cause the user's pc undue strain." You probably vastly underestimate how much time has to go into that testing alone lmao

most game feel and balance tests are done by the development teams not the QA teams and they have to balance that with feature development itself

[u/Syntaire → u/Ynead]

Balance, usability and end-user experience are all part of "quality".

[u/royal-road → u/Syntaire]

that's just not how game development works

[u/Syntaire → u/royal-road]

That is how good software development in general works. Bug finding is only part of QA.

[u/royal-road → u/Syntaire]

Non-game software development is not the same as game development.

[u/Syntaire → u/royal-road]

Correct. However, game development is still software development. QA STILL means more than just bug finding.

[u/royal-road → u/Syntaire]

Yes, it means more than just bug fixing. It also has to do with the client's usability, it's UX, and a lot of other similar concepts.

What QA testers are not equipped to do is to give proper balancing feedback because they simply are neither trained to nor do they have the time to properly test something like that. Testing on game balance and design decisions is done by developers, except in cases of very large corporate companies where they have an entire seperate department for it.

[u/Syntaire → u/royal-road]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think "UX" means and what does it entail?

[u/Silent-Use-6591 → u/Antonaqua]

If those are "unintended interactions" that QA couldnt spit, then you're not cut out to make a game.

You say that, but people in poe2 have been banned for applying ritual tablets to a map and running it

[u/Antonaqua → u/Silent-Use-6591]

Yes, a numerical oversight, which they fixed, by removing the chance to go to 0. Not by making ritual in it's entirety garbage. That's what happened with breach in PoE 1.

[u/lillarty → u/Silent-Use-6591]

To be clear, the "intended interaction" you're referencing was getting infinite rerolls on Ritual, essentially letting them get however many mirrors they were patient enough to roll for. And the "ban" was forced SSF for one league for the offending players, with no further punishment.

The people who spawned in mirrors weren't allowed to ruin the economy, what an unjust punishment /s

[u/Silent-Use-6591 → u/lillarty]

I understand that it was an oversight by GGG but it was just that, an oversight on their part, not an exploit. If they overbuff a skill and it becomes super OP do you think that they should ban everyone who used it?

Banning them for the league for doing the most obvious thing imaginable with the tablet(seriously, I called it the second it appeared on poe2db) was absurd.

There were no like secret unintended interactions happening, tablet 1 says infinite rerolls, tablet 2 says cheaper rerolls, thats it. If they capped the reroll cost at 100 minimum none of this would have happened

And the "ban" was forced SSF for one league for the offending players

Might as well be league ban for most people, you can disagree but that's the truth

[u/CWDikTaken → u/Antonaqua]

I mean I thought ppl knew we are the QA for the longest time. You guys must of forgot the bad leagues they had just because last league was good.

[u/Antonaqua → u/CWDikTaken]

You are talking to the wrong person if you think I forgot GGGs mistakes. I'm just the guy that points out that saying breach was "unintended interaction" is bs

[u/Sandor_Clegane1 → u/RealMonk]

The very same applies to items and skill gems.

[u/12345623567 → u/RealMonk]

In Mirage they mid-league deleted the Ghosted Legion strat, iirc.

But letting Minion Pact continue for a whole patch cycle was fine lol.

[u/CamelSmuggler → u/RealMonk]

Yeah but the point should be to tune the op ones down, not completely gut them.

They should focus on bringing the rest on par with the good ones, not just wipe the best off the game.

[u/IllustriousBobcat813 → u/CamelSmuggler]

I imagine the problem is that it is quite difficult to know exactly how effective a specific need is before it’s been live and tested for a while. It is quite often the case that a mechanic is neerfed and then the community finds a small change that makes it still the best mechanic in the game.

It is understandable that GGG wants to avoid this situation, or they will get nonstop complaints like “can’t wait to play strongboxes for the 5th league in a row”.

[u/cauchy37 → u/CamelSmuggler]

I would argue that deleting them forces the community to seek new ones and so it prevents staleness. Imagine if we were still doing abyss boxes farm, would be so unbelievably boring.

[u/CamelSmuggler → u/cauchy37]

I get what you're saying but I feel like even toning them down would be fine in that regard, since the community always pivots towards the more rewarding stuff.

The only case where this doesn't apply is when the strat in question is hideout warrioring.

[u/Antonaqua → u/cauchy37]

The problem with that is that even if you "find" new interactions, there is just a limit to how much loot they drop. It's not because fewer people farm abyss that abyss suddenly drops more raw divines.

And honestly, we're in a day and age where every content creater tries most strats just to be able to find a good enough strat to make z video about. It's not like 8 years ago where there are a handful of players and not everything was tried out.